How to Paint Graduated Shades
Variations in color, light and shadow can give a painting drama and dimension. Dark values of colors, called shades, can balance the light values, called tints. According to watercolor artist Gordon MacKenzie, dark values connote mystery, dignity, strength and weight. MacKenzie cautions that a painting with too many dark values may need balance from lighter values and tints. To create graduated shades and tints called gradations or gradients, add small amounts of black or white in sequence. With practice, the mastery of subtle gradations will reward you with richer dimensions and livelier paintings.
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Things You'll Need
- Paper or canvas
- Red tempera paint
- Black tempera paint
- Brushes
- White palette or white plastic plate
- Water
Instructions
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Pour a puddle of red paint and a puddle of black paint onto the palette or plate. Keep the pigments separate from each other.
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Thin the paints with just enough water to make them spread easily with the brushes. While diluting the paints, use separate brushes for each color.
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3
Apply a stripe of pure red to the paper. Using the red brush, go to the palette and mix a small amount of black with red. Brush the new shade across the paper immediately below and touching the first stripe.
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Continue to add small amounts of black to the red on the palette to create darker and darker shades of red. Apply each new shade below -- and touching -- the stripe that came before. The final stripe should contain only black.
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Look at the range of shades in the gradations from red to black and save your sample for future reference. According to watercolor artist Jan Kunz, the human eye can see 10 or 11 gradations of light and dark.
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Adapt the process to watercolor, oil or acrylic and practice with pigments you actually use when painting. For other variations when creating shades, Gordon MacKenzie recommends using colors like indigo, sepia or Payne's grey (a dark bluish grey) -- depending on the color you wish to darken.
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Experiment with various colors and their complements to create gradations. Complementary colors, when mixed together, create black. By mixing complements a little at a time, you should achieve interesting and lively shadow effects.
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Tips & Warnings
If you have other pigments and colors on hand, use them to experiment with values.
On sunny days, the shadow side of an object looks 40 percent darker than the sunny side.
References
- Photo Credit mountain shades image by Jakub Cejpek from Fotolia.com
